By Conor White

The holiday season. It’s the most wonderful time of the year for making terrible one-off references and marketing teams to display their knack for constructing bad puns. That said, it’s also rife with opportunities you’d be hard pressed to find at any other time of year, like the events the aforementioned marketing teams struggle to be creative with. Cynicism aside, this year’s Jingle Ball offered a pretty impressive array of artists that offered a pretty impressive concert.

I arrived just before Magic! took the stage, and wasn’t sure what to expect from them. As they took their places and opened with “Don’t Kill the Magic,” one thing was made clear instantly: the mix was way off. Between the cacophony of sound and the lighting rig insistent upon blasting the audience with light, it was hard to adjust to their opener, but they slowed things down with “Let Down Your Hair” and the proper acoustic adjustments were slowly made. They finished up with “Rude,” and with the vocals now somewhat audible over the drums, made for a somewhat enjoyable listen.

Nick Jonas was up next and was preparing to shatter the preconceptions made by 14-year-old me. I was expecting some kind of supporting band for him, despite his recent foray into the life of a solo artist, but when he settled in on stage it was only Nick and a pianist. Some might say that playing acoustic in a large venue is risky. Nick Jonas would disagree, and his acoustic rendition of “Chains” would only support his claim. There were portions of the song overpowered by the keyboard, but it was quickly corrected and Nick proceeded to showcase his artistic talent. As the song wrapped up, a gospel choir shuffled onstage as they jumped into “Jealous.” Once again this unexpected gambit paid off, and the vocal prowess of the solo Jonas brother coupled with the choir was truly impressive.

Echosmith had the honor of following that disappointingly short two song set. They wasted no time with “Let’s Love” to kick off their set, and they sounded pretty good. This was followed by a somewhat contrived attempt to get the fans involved as they asked for the crowd to pose for a photo. With their insistence for us to “get close,” I can only imagine it was playing into their next song, “Come Together.” This was followed by “Talking Dreams,” and “Tell Her You Love Her” interspersed with some background comments from the band prior to each song. Before Echosmith launched into “Bright,” they once again asked the crowd to be involved by giving us the incentive of being recorded if we were energetic enough. The video was recorded and they finished up their set with “Cool Kids” and “Nothing’s Wrong”. They managed to do all this bouncing around energetically onstage and maintaining a consistent sound, just about all you can ask from a band in a live performance. Echosmith was followed by other artists including Jason Derulo, Fall Out Boy, and Meaghan Trainor.

Overall the concert was enjoyable; there were a few hiccups here and there, but no one dropped the ball so poorly it affected the experience. The holiday season delivered this time, regardless of what their marketing team would have me believe.